"Bob" wrote in message
...
On May 23, 7:17=A0pm, "Paul K. Dickman" wrote:
I talked to a couple of my suppliers who have 12" rolls and sell
Argentium=
.

They told me they could reroll some materials but this wasn't one of
them.=


I was only talking to customer service reps, not the techs. So I do not
kn=
ow
if =A0a licensing issue, a contamination issue or whether there is some
th=
ing
intrinsic in the alloy that precludes cross rolling.

The reflectors do not have any compound curves. I could stretch it in the
hammer work, but I would have to add at least 1/3 to the area.

That would be a whole lot of hammering.

Paul K. Dickman

Interesting, but puzzling. You would think, if the material can be
hammer-forged, it could also be rolled....

Do you know anyone with a power hammer? That, at least, might make
the stretching bearable.

Regard,

Bob

Actually, hammering is much easier on the metal's structure than rolling.

The grain distortion from hammering is much more diffuse, and the metal has
time to equalize the tension between hammer blows.

Rolling puts all the distortion in one direction. It tends to find week
spots in the metal, and magnify them by squeezing them from one end of the
sheet to the other.

As far as Argentium, I never got an answer from the service reps.

I think that it is much more likely, that the metal goes through a final
proprietary annealing step, and the original licensor feels that this is
necessary to insure product quality. The secondary sellers are not able to
perform this step and are not supposed to reroll.

Paul K. Dickman